Wednesday night as bombs were falling on Ukraine, Sen. Cruz was partying hard with Trump at Mar-a-Lago along with other GOP senators, having already sabotaged Biden's efforts against Putin
How about a simple current history of Russia to remind Americans what it's like to live under Putin. How would a truck convoy blocking the Kremlin go over do you think? They'd all be hung in Red Square. Most people in this country don't know what ordinary life is like in Russia today. And that is what the Trump Republicans want to turn this country into.
The agreement made with the Soviet Union was that if they allowed the reunification of German, a country that had incited two wars and invasions of the Soviet Union, then the United States would not expand the NATO military organization to the east and threaten the Soviets. The United States has repeatedly violated that agreement once it got the reunification, it sought to sell new military weapons to the new NATO members who are forced to convert to new ones made by American, British, and French firms.
A Lend Lease by FDR was a way to get the Soviets to do all the fighting while Americans stayed at home, much as with the firsth World War. The end result was 20 million people dead in the Soviet Union as compared to less than half a million Americans. The Soviet armies fought against 80 German divisions as compared to fewer than 20 divisions with the allies armies. The Soviets crushed the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Korea and accomlished more in the first 3 weeks with their invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 (requested by FDR) than the U.S. military accomplished in 4 years of fighting for its former colonies in the Pacific.
Imagine the response if Putin established military bases in Mexico and Cuba and Venezuela and supplied them with missles systems as the U.S. has done across Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. launched illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and devasted the countries and caused the deaths of millions of civilians but that is different?
There's a valid reason NATO exists; Putin just proved that in spades! Yes, the US military, by generally ignoring rampant corruption while foolishly trying to fulfill the jingoistic, dystopian nightmares of the neocons under the Village Idiot's regime, certainly fubared Afghanistan with endless war, which ended up as a convenient testing grounds for advanced weaponry and to hone the skills for both conventional and asymmetric warfare -- another bipartisan, foreign-policy boondoggle squandering blood and treasure.
Putin the forever ruler trying to fluff up his megalomaniacal ego has yet to learn the lesson of empires. (Hint: It's the same one for holes. )The famously bloated military-industrial complex of the US mega-metropolis empire is slowing realizing the limits of its projected power, you'd think anyway, after getting burned bigly in the Middle East by our longest and most senseless war.
Still, unlike Russia (if you're listening), the US Constitution and the UN Charter strictly forbids annexing any part of an unwilling country by brute force, certainly not the overthrow of its government. Period!
There's just no way to spin that key provision, so why is an an armed incursion across an internationally recognized border even up for debate, a direct violation of an agreement sacrosanct to all nations? The rest of the world needs to pull together for once and rein in this petty tyrant by every means possible short of armed confrontation. This cannot stand. The sad little man Putin and his worldly powers do not exist in a vacuum, nor is he infallible and unstoppable.
It's not the 'what' they are doing or saying that is so troublesome (even though it is), it's the 'how' they're doing it: Right. In. The. Open.
Putin's little puppy, Diaper Don, needs an eternal time-out. As do any of those in support of either. Traitors to both human agency and the very essence of life itself must be neutralized. The consequence of not doing so is the neutralization of everything else...
The fact that Republicans are using the invasion as partisan fodder is reprehensible and predictable. But so is the 32 year history of US manipulations and intimidations towards the former and chaotic republics of the USSR. Yeltzin was lauded here as a great president because he let Goldman Sachs and their neoliberalism take control of privatization schemes, they inhabited the Kremlin, and helped pillage the country, part if the blowback was Putin, he was trusted as a patriot. Now we have our dubs patrolling the Black Sea and missiles n Turkey and Poland. Have you read Putin’s speech frim Wednesday? You should. He deserves the respect of being heard. He wants NATO to draw back. The US backed the fascist coup in Ukraine, invited them to join NATO. There are a lot of ethnic Fussians in Ukraine and they don’t want to be part of the American empire, no more do than the Crimeans who voted 90% to join Russia. This invasion is 100% caused by, provoked by the US. Putin days he does not want to control Ukraine and that he’s looking for named fascists who have killed Russians. He says he wants NATO to pull back. Russia lost 27 million people the last time the west invaded through Ukraine, before that Napoleon invaded through Ukraine. It’s high time we stop intimidating and lying about foreign leaders who have the courage to reject US aggression
It's very difficult to understand how Florida's voters have elected Senator Rick Scott, and why they supported him as their governor from 2011-19. However, they did, and Florida's percentage of retired people depending on Medicare and Social Security is very high:
"About 21 percent of Florida’s population -- about 3.9 million people -- receive Social Security benefits. About 4 million Floridians use Medicare for health insurance."
There is obviously a challenge with the narratives that get to voters from both the Democratic Party and the Republican party. And name-calling is equally ineffective. Independent voters appear to dislike significant portions of both the Liberal and the Conservative rants, and those voters are hungry for adult conversations that are respectful of both sides of the political arena.
Perhaps it would be more productive to figure out how to replace Senator Scott with a person with common sense that is neither liberal nor conservative. Raising the income cap for Social Security and adopting a Medicare-for-All is certainly common sense-and may focus voters in Florida.
I am a Cold-Warrior previously stationed in Frankfurt; we were ready to fight the Russians should they come through the Fulda Gap. Years later, back home, I was looking at a beautiful coat in Macy's and it shocked me that it was made in Russia. It took a long time to get to that point and to where we let many, many Russians emigrate. So, if you want to know what their country is like, listen to THEM. It's easy to find books by people who have dealt with Putin and his little reign of terror on gays, journalists, and anyone working for democracy. "The Man Without A Face" by Masha Gessen is a good read to start with.
The NY Times had a front-page column: "Russians Wake-up To Discover They Didn't Really Know Putin". They thought he was stable and kept the country on an even keel. Surprise! He's a psychopath, and that means he is the only person living in his head. No one knows what he is doing or thinking. I think he sh*t the bed this time, but we shall see what happens when the dead soldiers start coming home in boxes. Let's see what their Committee of Soldiers' Mothers do.
Republicans already backed a loser-psychopath, and now they are hell-bent on doing it again. How very conservative of them!?
Categorizing someone as either liberal or conservative is labelling that person, i.e., name-calling them, but within the acceptable lexicon of polite political discourse. Yet, on the mean streets of real-life, that’s hard to do when a huge majority of a major party has convinced itself that the path to one-party rule is to lie about everything all the time, big and small, and cheat like hell despite the mortal blows to the civility required for a functioning democracy — with which they fundamentally disagree, making it abundantly clear — as long as they can falsely portray their political opponents as the illegitimate sperm of Satan, sacrificing babies and drinking their blood... or maybe sprinkling it on their pizzas in the basement. Democrats are part of a pedophile ring, too — a worldwide cabal of ‘em! No, really, swear to God.
So, how does one give malicious gibberish equal weight in a normal, give-and-take debate? Right, like we’re going to argue over childish nonsense with an all-time L-O-S-E-R, pouting and stomping his feet because the mean-old DemocRATs swiped an entire national election despite 99.999% of every scrap of evidence under every rock to the contrary. And very, very bad people — socialists! — pulled off this, yes, unbelievable caper right under the noses of an entire planet fixated on one of history’s most fascinating watershed elections? Simply amazing!
And get this: The sneaky bastards ran this scam undetected behind the backs of nearly everyone in the world’s most technologically savvy, overly monitored nation — 168.31 million motivated and registered voters, as of 2020, who can do basic reading, ’riting, and ‘rithmatic. Tricky, those wascally wabbits! Can you believe it? Nope.
But you know what, thinking about it cynically — it’s hard not to — let’s falsely assume the word salad burgers of conspiRACISTS have a speck of protein and the Democratic Party machine actually cheated in our highly localized and incredibly complex voting system (It did not.) beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. If that’s truly the case, then who would you want really running things in a ruthless and complex world full of win-at-all-cost assholes: intelligent and capable progressives who know how to play the game and get shit done to help their fellow citizens; or, stupid and immoral liars and losers (Republicans... in case you’re still confused) whose primitive mentalities, attitudes, and policies only hurt and kill people and other living things while ruining our beautiful planet for fun and profit, or worse, for egocentric, religio-whacko, white-national tribalism? The dumber-than-dumb Retrumplicans let those dang DumbocRATs fool the hell out of ‘em again. Haha, gotcha!
Labeling and name-calling in politics are irresistible behaviors, old as dirt. Whether it’s acceptable and/or effective is in the eye of the beholder. We know juvenile trolling is not a feely-touchy concern for Trumpees who wallow in raw sewage. Neither does it seem to bother much the mythical “independents” and “swing” voters who aren’t really sure, apparently, about anything. Just how many wobbly fence-sitters are up for grabs, anyway, who are still scratching their little pinheads after six miserable years of an egomaniacal baboon constantly mugging for the cameras and his 30,000-plus, bald-faced lies constantly clogging our devices since he descended the golden elevator in his golden tower like a Greek god waving benevolently to the cheering surfs, a crowd of paid supporters secretly laughing at him — a complete farce like everything else in his life?
But, going with the flow, it seems corporate media loves to portray lefty sissies as weak and toothless intellectuals unwilling to fight it out down in the mud and the blood like Herr Drumpf’s fascist Brownshirts of the new Reich. Evidently, the problem ain’t that weepy libtards are mean; it’s that they ain’t mean enough. Mealy-mouthed weaklings are universally despised.
Since it’s always, “damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” liberal progressives — the good guys — may as well err on the side of righteousness and fight fascist bastards on all fronts (nonviolently, it’s necessary to say nowadays, like Woody Guthrie and all the other great heroes for the common folks). Politely or not.
At the end of the day before election day, all that should matter is that voters see the truth of things beyond all the shade — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Democracies survive and thrive in sunlight. Why is such a universal principle so damn hard for radical Retrumplicans to accept? The answer is in the question.
"The truth is out there, Scully" ...in the previous posts.
Time for a little honesty. You are accusing others of what you are doing on steroids: throwing out erroneous accusations without evidence. And your questionable sourcing includes a lot of other people's mistaken notions. That's how thought viruses spread from the diseased swamps in La La Land.
But it seems your most malicious attacks are reserved almost exclusively for Democrats and American intelligence services while largely excusing or downplaying Republican and Russian outright fabrications -- the very people most responsible for spreading disinformation about the Mueller investigation. Sure, a few mild softballs are hurled at the bad actors on the reich, but token nods don't quite get you to that Fux News "fair and balanced" level of hypocritical fantasy.
I don't know if trolls realize how their own words betray them. They should stay downwind from their prey.
At least you could slow down enough to work the spell-checker and "quit stinewalling." 🤣 (Never have hopped onto a stine and took it walling, but it sounds like a blast.)
How about a simple current history of Russia to remind Americans what it's like to live under Putin. How would a truck convoy blocking the Kremlin go over do you think? They'd all be hung in Red Square. Most people in this country don't know what ordinary life is like in Russia today. And that is what the Trump Republicans want to turn this country into.
The agreement made with the Soviet Union was that if they allowed the reunification of German, a country that had incited two wars and invasions of the Soviet Union, then the United States would not expand the NATO military organization to the east and threaten the Soviets. The United States has repeatedly violated that agreement once it got the reunification, it sought to sell new military weapons to the new NATO members who are forced to convert to new ones made by American, British, and French firms.
A Lend Lease by FDR was a way to get the Soviets to do all the fighting while Americans stayed at home, much as with the firsth World War. The end result was 20 million people dead in the Soviet Union as compared to less than half a million Americans. The Soviet armies fought against 80 German divisions as compared to fewer than 20 divisions with the allies armies. The Soviets crushed the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Korea and accomlished more in the first 3 weeks with their invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 (requested by FDR) than the U.S. military accomplished in 4 years of fighting for its former colonies in the Pacific.
Imagine the response if Putin established military bases in Mexico and Cuba and Venezuela and supplied them with missles systems as the U.S. has done across Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. launched illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and devasted the countries and caused the deaths of millions of civilians but that is different?
Back in the 1950s the wacky John Birch Society insisted there were “agents of Moscow” hiding in the U.S government. Maybe they were right after all!
There's a valid reason NATO exists; Putin just proved that in spades! Yes, the US military, by generally ignoring rampant corruption while foolishly trying to fulfill the jingoistic, dystopian nightmares of the neocons under the Village Idiot's regime, certainly fubared Afghanistan with endless war, which ended up as a convenient testing grounds for advanced weaponry and to hone the skills for both conventional and asymmetric warfare -- another bipartisan, foreign-policy boondoggle squandering blood and treasure.
Putin the forever ruler trying to fluff up his megalomaniacal ego has yet to learn the lesson of empires. (Hint: It's the same one for holes. )The famously bloated military-industrial complex of the US mega-metropolis empire is slowing realizing the limits of its projected power, you'd think anyway, after getting burned bigly in the Middle East by our longest and most senseless war.
Still, unlike Russia (if you're listening), the US Constitution and the UN Charter strictly forbids annexing any part of an unwilling country by brute force, certainly not the overthrow of its government. Period!
There's just no way to spin that key provision, so why is an an armed incursion across an internationally recognized border even up for debate, a direct violation of an agreement sacrosanct to all nations? The rest of the world needs to pull together for once and rein in this petty tyrant by every means possible short of armed confrontation. This cannot stand. The sad little man Putin and his worldly powers do not exist in a vacuum, nor is he infallible and unstoppable.
Wow... That's a brilliant read.
It's not the 'what' they are doing or saying that is so troublesome (even though it is), it's the 'how' they're doing it: Right. In. The. Open.
Putin's little puppy, Diaper Don, needs an eternal time-out. As do any of those in support of either. Traitors to both human agency and the very essence of life itself must be neutralized. The consequence of not doing so is the neutralization of everything else...
The fact that Republicans are using the invasion as partisan fodder is reprehensible and predictable. But so is the 32 year history of US manipulations and intimidations towards the former and chaotic republics of the USSR. Yeltzin was lauded here as a great president because he let Goldman Sachs and their neoliberalism take control of privatization schemes, they inhabited the Kremlin, and helped pillage the country, part if the blowback was Putin, he was trusted as a patriot. Now we have our dubs patrolling the Black Sea and missiles n Turkey and Poland. Have you read Putin’s speech frim Wednesday? You should. He deserves the respect of being heard. He wants NATO to draw back. The US backed the fascist coup in Ukraine, invited them to join NATO. There are a lot of ethnic Fussians in Ukraine and they don’t want to be part of the American empire, no more do than the Crimeans who voted 90% to join Russia. This invasion is 100% caused by, provoked by the US. Putin days he does not want to control Ukraine and that he’s looking for named fascists who have killed Russians. He says he wants NATO to pull back. Russia lost 27 million people the last time the west invaded through Ukraine, before that Napoleon invaded through Ukraine. It’s high time we stop intimidating and lying about foreign leaders who have the courage to reject US aggression
It's very difficult to understand how Florida's voters have elected Senator Rick Scott, and why they supported him as their governor from 2011-19. However, they did, and Florida's percentage of retired people depending on Medicare and Social Security is very high:
"About 21 percent of Florida’s population -- about 3.9 million people -- receive Social Security benefits. About 4 million Floridians use Medicare for health insurance."
There is obviously a challenge with the narratives that get to voters from both the Democratic Party and the Republican party. And name-calling is equally ineffective. Independent voters appear to dislike significant portions of both the Liberal and the Conservative rants, and those voters are hungry for adult conversations that are respectful of both sides of the political arena.
Perhaps it would be more productive to figure out how to replace Senator Scott with a person with common sense that is neither liberal nor conservative. Raising the income cap for Social Security and adopting a Medicare-for-All is certainly common sense-and may focus voters in Florida.
Thom, I love your work. I wrote my own take on this Russia+Republican match-made-in-hell Routine yesterday. I hope you will check it out.
https://medium.com/leftovers-again/why-we-should-care-about-ukraine-db5416caf76e
Obstruction of Justice has nothing to do with Putin. You still haven’t given us a shred of evidence of Russian interference.
I am a Cold-Warrior previously stationed in Frankfurt; we were ready to fight the Russians should they come through the Fulda Gap. Years later, back home, I was looking at a beautiful coat in Macy's and it shocked me that it was made in Russia. It took a long time to get to that point and to where we let many, many Russians emigrate. So, if you want to know what their country is like, listen to THEM. It's easy to find books by people who have dealt with Putin and his little reign of terror on gays, journalists, and anyone working for democracy. "The Man Without A Face" by Masha Gessen is a good read to start with.
The NY Times had a front-page column: "Russians Wake-up To Discover They Didn't Really Know Putin". They thought he was stable and kept the country on an even keel. Surprise! He's a psychopath, and that means he is the only person living in his head. No one knows what he is doing or thinking. I think he sh*t the bed this time, but we shall see what happens when the dead soldiers start coming home in boxes. Let's see what their Committee of Soldiers' Mothers do.
Republicans already backed a loser-psychopath, and now they are hell-bent on doing it again. How very conservative of them!?
Categorizing someone as either liberal or conservative is labelling that person, i.e., name-calling them, but within the acceptable lexicon of polite political discourse. Yet, on the mean streets of real-life, that’s hard to do when a huge majority of a major party has convinced itself that the path to one-party rule is to lie about everything all the time, big and small, and cheat like hell despite the mortal blows to the civility required for a functioning democracy — with which they fundamentally disagree, making it abundantly clear — as long as they can falsely portray their political opponents as the illegitimate sperm of Satan, sacrificing babies and drinking their blood... or maybe sprinkling it on their pizzas in the basement. Democrats are part of a pedophile ring, too — a worldwide cabal of ‘em! No, really, swear to God.
So, how does one give malicious gibberish equal weight in a normal, give-and-take debate? Right, like we’re going to argue over childish nonsense with an all-time L-O-S-E-R, pouting and stomping his feet because the mean-old DemocRATs swiped an entire national election despite 99.999% of every scrap of evidence under every rock to the contrary. And very, very bad people — socialists! — pulled off this, yes, unbelievable caper right under the noses of an entire planet fixated on one of history’s most fascinating watershed elections? Simply amazing!
And get this: The sneaky bastards ran this scam undetected behind the backs of nearly everyone in the world’s most technologically savvy, overly monitored nation — 168.31 million motivated and registered voters, as of 2020, who can do basic reading, ’riting, and ‘rithmatic. Tricky, those wascally wabbits! Can you believe it? Nope.
But you know what, thinking about it cynically — it’s hard not to — let’s falsely assume the word salad burgers of conspiRACISTS have a speck of protein and the Democratic Party machine actually cheated in our highly localized and incredibly complex voting system (It did not.) beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. If that’s truly the case, then who would you want really running things in a ruthless and complex world full of win-at-all-cost assholes: intelligent and capable progressives who know how to play the game and get shit done to help their fellow citizens; or, stupid and immoral liars and losers (Republicans... in case you’re still confused) whose primitive mentalities, attitudes, and policies only hurt and kill people and other living things while ruining our beautiful planet for fun and profit, or worse, for egocentric, religio-whacko, white-national tribalism? The dumber-than-dumb Retrumplicans let those dang DumbocRATs fool the hell out of ‘em again. Haha, gotcha!
Labeling and name-calling in politics are irresistible behaviors, old as dirt. Whether it’s acceptable and/or effective is in the eye of the beholder. We know juvenile trolling is not a feely-touchy concern for Trumpees who wallow in raw sewage. Neither does it seem to bother much the mythical “independents” and “swing” voters who aren’t really sure, apparently, about anything. Just how many wobbly fence-sitters are up for grabs, anyway, who are still scratching their little pinheads after six miserable years of an egomaniacal baboon constantly mugging for the cameras and his 30,000-plus, bald-faced lies constantly clogging our devices since he descended the golden elevator in his golden tower like a Greek god waving benevolently to the cheering surfs, a crowd of paid supporters secretly laughing at him — a complete farce like everything else in his life?
But, going with the flow, it seems corporate media loves to portray lefty sissies as weak and toothless intellectuals unwilling to fight it out down in the mud and the blood like Herr Drumpf’s fascist Brownshirts of the new Reich. Evidently, the problem ain’t that weepy libtards are mean; it’s that they ain’t mean enough. Mealy-mouthed weaklings are universally despised.
Since it’s always, “damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” liberal progressives — the good guys — may as well err on the side of righteousness and fight fascist bastards on all fronts (nonviolently, it’s necessary to say nowadays, like Woody Guthrie and all the other great heroes for the common folks). Politely or not.
At the end of the day before election day, all that should matter is that voters see the truth of things beyond all the shade — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Democracies survive and thrive in sunlight. Why is such a universal principle so damn hard for radical Retrumplicans to accept? The answer is in the question.
"The truth is out there, Scully" ...in the previous posts.
Time for a little honesty. You are accusing others of what you are doing on steroids: throwing out erroneous accusations without evidence. And your questionable sourcing includes a lot of other people's mistaken notions. That's how thought viruses spread from the diseased swamps in La La Land.
But it seems your most malicious attacks are reserved almost exclusively for Democrats and American intelligence services while largely excusing or downplaying Republican and Russian outright fabrications -- the very people most responsible for spreading disinformation about the Mueller investigation. Sure, a few mild softballs are hurled at the bad actors on the reich, but token nods don't quite get you to that Fux News "fair and balanced" level of hypocritical fantasy.
I don't know if trolls realize how their own words betray them. They should stay downwind from their prey.
At least you could slow down enough to work the spell-checker and "quit stinewalling." 🤣 (Never have hopped onto a stine and took it walling, but it sounds like a blast.)
It seems to me, if ever there was a time to change the rules of the Senate, how about a one-time hold on the hold?